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What clubbing is like in Buenos Aires, and some meditations.
Before arriving in Buenos Aires as an equally eager as nervous spring semester junior in late January, I was not a club rat for many reasons. I lived in New York City where people (or at least the people I register as I walk down the lonely, anonymous streets) are skinny, rich, and rude. Inevitably, as a bad feminist (whatever that word may mean to you), I felt as if the way I dress did not adhere to the standards of NYC club life. Perhaps this was just an excuse to mask the fact I didn’t have a solid group of friends who particularly enjoyed NYC nightlife. Anyway, I don’t wear crop tops because of my belly. I don’t have a butt, so there’s nothing to accentuate via tight, high-waisted skinny jeans. On the other hand, the few times I’d been clubbing, I had a boatload of fun. Poppers, cocaine, and shots fueled my naïveté and one-in-a-while indulgence in the club scenes. Without the stims, I would be dead on the dance floor.
Anyway, I pulled up to the clubs with a vintage tee shirt, silk eyelash extensions, a fucking ponytail, and dickies I’d had since high school. My toes were protected by the fierce leather of Doc Martens. My butch aesthetic comforted me in a sea of ugly, disgruntled middle America-to-Brooklyn transplants.
In Buenos Aires, I shed my pathetic insecurities and wore whatever I wanted. I was infused, without knowing how, with irrational bouts of confidence that, from previous ethnographic experience, middle age women tend to feel at resorts in the Caribbean. I loved it. I post-rationalize: the warm summer air always does that to me. Perhaps this newfound feeling of feeling myself was thanks to the other students with whom I was forced to socialize with because to me, they are objectively unattractive attractive. I suppose that’s an unfair observation; rather, they still didn’t know how to make themselves look attractive. Being attractive, as I’ve learnt over the years, is about making others perceive that you are attractive. We’re talking about the women’s case here. Attractiveness is cultivated through mastering the equilibrium of confidence, some incorporation of glitter or shine in your outfit, and flattering clothing. For example, I am absolutely barren of any drop of attraction when I wake up. My pajamas are comprised of clothes I bought that serve me no purpose in flattery and so these pieces have been assigned the role of loungewear. My face is swollen without makeup to accentuate my features. This is all irrelevant to an extent, but bear with me.
The first night I ever went out in Buenos Aires was during my program’s orientation week. O-Week was obviously a bore; every day the coordinators rallied against using Uber (which is illegal but present in Argentina) and taunted us with questionably racist and classist stories of the omnipresent threat of being robbed/pickpocketed. According to the coordinators, the street value of an iPhone in Argentina comes out to about one month’s spending for a family of four in Argentina. This is fucked up, and explains why there are literally no Apple stores in this country. To be honest, it’s liberating, no? So, seeking more than sterile presentations, a few others (not yet friends) and I decided to hit the club after a laid back night at an outdoor beer garden (are all beer gardens outdoors?), Bierhof.
Two students, both of who donned pink hair in a different shade than each other, found a club. It’s name is Kika. Sure! Why not? That day also happened to be my 21st birthday. In other words, I was desperate to make the night somewhat memorable. In the US, it would be a great deal! I said “fack it!” And followed these strangers, essentially, to a club 15 minutes away. The cover is 200 Argentine pesos and I can’t remember if it covered free drink. The inside is moderate in size with a bar to the left and the dancefloor to the right. The dance floor had to levels, the lower one being the main floor while the elevated one is for VIPs with tables. It was dark inside (for those of you who have no idea what the inside of a club looks like). We began dancing to US tunes mixed seamlessly with Latin tunes, or perhaps that may be a memory from my incapacitated state. I danced with potential friends (possibly for the next four months,) trying impossibly to gauge our compatibility as strobe lights blinded me (in the best way possible). One of the men there, a shorter, orthodox Jewish guy, ended up being my “friend” for the first two weeks. He was the first friend I had to straight up drop in my entire existence on this earth because of his stupidity and frankly, my own stupidity for making very late the (one-sided) realization of our painfully contradicting personalities and values.
Before I knew it a man snatched me from my dance circle with potential friends and frienemies. At this point I was thoroughly wasted, enough to enjoy the clubbing experience even with music I didn’t understand. He twirled me into his embrace and grabbed my face. Well, and, you know, we started to make out. It was hot! I enjoyed it. I peeked past his head to see where my friends were, and luckily they too were as blacked out as myself, so I continued my business with this man. Let me say, thank god it was loud in the club. He asked me questions in Spanish that I couldn’t (yet) understand and I blamed it on the rad, but blasting, music. A few minutes later I part ways with him, telling him I must return to my friends. Then, ten minutes later, he made eye contact with me, and being the weak bitch I am, I swiftly returned to his embrace, leaving my short man soon-to-be then eventually not friend dancing in the dust, no hope in his future of dancing sensually with an Argentine woman.
His name was Sebastian, and he put his number in my WhatsApp in the middle of the club. He started getting aggressive, but nothing I was uncomfortable with, maybe except when he pulled my bodysuit down and revealed my left tit and sucked on it in the middle of the fucking dance floor! Ew! But yes! I didn’t say no! I liked it… in the moment! I was…drunk? If I had one more shot I would have just taken my whole shirt off but I had enough consciousness to make up for the dignity that spared me from the embarrassment and unsettling stares from other old men. I should just go to a sex club. It was getting late so I retreated from Seba and found my friends and we headed home.
All of this is to say that in NYC I don’t pull guys. No man looks at me, and that’s whatever, but to every club I’ve been to outside of the US, men are into me. I’m a feminist, sure, and I shouldn’t value myself based on male attention. And I don’t. I’m just lamenting on a pattern that I’ve observed. I read online somewhere that Argentine men tend to view Americans as easy, as Argentine women are apparently notoriously cold and difficult to court. Perhaps I exude whore energy merely because I am American, but I’m also Asian, and those seem to be a rare face here as well… Not all of my American friends (white), however, are pursued as aggressively as me, not to say that I am Hotter than Thou, but that I find it interesting to dissect. Maybe I reek of desperation with my bodysuit… with DIY cutoff knee jorts with a Uniqlo jacked tied around my fucking waist!!! Perhaps the jorts suggest that I am non-threatening? Perhaps being both Asian and white, I inhabit something sort of like a middle ground between non-white and white (which I guess I literally do) but what I’m trying to communicate is in terms of Argentine men who may be intimidated to go for the American white girl, I am their safer bet. I’m the middle ground; not exactly what you asked for, but it’ll do. On the other hand, maybe Asian fetishism is standard here (Argentina is known to be the “whitest” Latin American country, making it prone to weebism/Orientalism), thus putting me at a higher rank than any other white exchange student who study here in continuous hoards (at least compared to Asians). These are just some of my saturated-fat ridden food for thought.
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for my mother
at 7 the brown suede pullout couch that consumed two corners of my room that come to think of it even 7 year old me thought was ugly was where i first saw you cry. perched on the edge of the couch your wet tears invisible to me through pieces of your thinning hair curtains your round face punctuated with unnaturally arched brows and cheekbones to match.
i always loved your brows. the long dreamy shimmering baby blue path from your uneven eyelids to your brows now drenched from the first grown-up tears i’ve witnessed on the brown suede pullout couch that consumes two corners of my room that was the first day i met you. the smoke from your cigarette settles into stillness but you kept the list of regrets in your next pack that you’d never smoke.
your tears extend their arms towards me and the smoke whispers behind my ear as we sat:
me, brother, and dad watching you unravel. i’m sorry.
at 18 i snatched your love traded it for a pack
or independence
or whatever
hid it deep in my duffel and left you for fucking oregon where the trees kiss the fog and the moss sing for the weeping clouds. where i kissed one too many california fuck-ups
transplanted in portland: “he just couldn’t do LA.” at 18 on the honey brown leather couch wrapped in the blanket you knitted me that consumed just one corner of my room.
perched on the edge of my sofa my tears invisible to no one through pieces of my thick hair
curtains my round face punctuated with slightly arched brows now drenched from the first grown-up tears no one had witnessed. longing for smokey i love you’s to fill my tear soaked lungs.
now we sit on a new brown sofa no longer suede, it’s canvas, from the brooklyn ikea next to dusty dressers that have to suck in to keeps its doors shut for storing your yarns whose fibers tickle my nostrils and ears that may or may not be used within the year.
we live closer to the park than the river where you spend your days weaving us back together
a scarf that spells i love you.
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